TIME’s reporter in Yemen Oliver Holmes phoned in to report that he and the reporters for the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are being deported by the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The ostensible reason given by the government was that Holmes, Haley Sweetland Edwards of the L.A. Times and Portia Walker of the Post were working as journalists without having been certified to do so by Sana’a. Yemen requires reporters to apply for journalist visas even though it rarely issues such documents. However, a de facto certification has long existed as an alternative: informing the Ministry of Information of one’s status as a reporter for a specific media company. Holmes, Edwards and Walker have consistently apprised the ministry of their status. All three journalists have been reporting on the government’s increasingly harsh response to street protests demanding the immedidate resignation of Saleh.